For the last two hundred thousand years or so, Cro-Magnon, the modern homosapien, has changed very little. Any given pair of individuals in this time period would be visually indistinguishable as species so long as they were subjected to the same environmental factors. However, the hominid genus is about a million years old, and modern homosapien is just the last sliver of it, definitely not the original and the original hominid would not be recognized as any species living today.

That is if anything could be called the original hominid, the idea of one is considered outdated as of this writing but there has been much speculation, study and effort to find the original man, probably some outlandish fiction too. In fact, this is one of the oldest tropes in the book. Compare to precursors, which are more about societies rather than physical differences, Frazetta Man and All Cavemen Were Neanderthals.

A variation of the trope is an older species of man that was wiped out before ours began or is biologically independent of the homosapien genus in some other way.

Examples

Comics

In Marvel Comics's Earth X/Universe X/Paradise X trilogy, the original humans were a feral, beastlike race before the Celestials came to our planet and began fiddling with our genetics. The Celestials use young planets as "incubators" for their kind, and Superhumans were created to act as "antibodies" to protect the planet from invasion—particularly from Galactus, their sworn enemy. It turns out that Wolverine is not a mutant, but actually the last "pure" human left alive.

In Marvel comics, Adam K'ad-mon is a man-thing lookalike who is believed by some to be the original human being and protects the prime matrix, which is the focal point of the "multiverse".

In Mission to Mars, the then famous face was theorized to have been carved by original man. (Then famous because when we actually saw it in real life it turned out not to be a face.)

Literature

One early Discworld novel reveals that the First Men of the Disc created by the gods were immensely powerful beings, which took one look at their situation and lost their tempers. After the resulting mayhem, men were re-created a good deal smaller.

Live Action TV

Stargate's Alterans, an ancient human subspecies predating Cro-Magnon. They are indistinguishable from homo sapiens outwardly, technically have much greater genetic diversity on account of longer existence and wider distribution but so few are left in the visible universe that it is almost a mute point. The Stargate builders among them left behind a lot of technology that only works when used by people with their genes though.

Real life

"The" Original Man is suspect, as we cannot be sure a new fossil won't be discovered that's a better candidate than the currently-known hominids. Plus, where do you draw the line between Original Man and common ancestor of humans and other apes?

Religion, Folklore and Mythology

The Book of Genesis describes the creation of humans beings twice. First time man and woman are created at the same time and told to take care of the Earth and multiply across it by God. The second time woman is made from man, they were originally immortal, and reproduction is a punishment for eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which causes them to experience mortality as a price for gaining moral judgment similar to God's. Some ways of looking at it, as relating to this trope:

Adam, Eve, and the garden of Eden were created separately from the rest of the Earth. Adam and Eve joined original man after being forced out of the garden. (in religious that do not take Enoch as canon it might can account for the half breed Nephilim. The sons of God being original man, the daughters of men being from Adam's line and the giant Nephilim being hybrids. Those accepting Enoch see fallen angels as responsible, suggesting a different trope)

Original woman abandoned Adam or was forced out of the garden by him and a new woman was created who was more similar to Adam in her makeup.

In the Zohar and other Kabbalah texts, original man, Adam Kadmon, is not so much a physical being as it is a spiritual realm from which every human body gets its soul.

In Manichean religion, original man was a creation of God given to the world of light to help them fight off the invading forces of The Antigod from the world of darkness. Modern man was a mistake caused by not properly following God's instruction.

In a lot of Gnostic discourses, modern man is said to be an illusion and inferior imitation of the original man.

Adam and Eve are described as having been giants (about 60 cubits tall, or 90 feet) in Mohammedan Islam tradition, with each successive generation of descendants gradually decreasing in proportions to the size modern humans have been for the last few thousand years. Also, humans originally did not age but started doing so many thousands of years later (partially in response to Abraham asking God for a sign that his life is nearing its end).

In some Chinese creation stories, original man Pan Gu was a giant and modern man were as fleas living on his flesh. When Pan Gu died his remains became many of the Earth's features. In fact there would not even be a planet if Pan Gu had not shaped it while he was alive.

The original man, Kali (or Kaliyan) was born from a fragment of evil in Ayyavazhi mythology and he and his later created wife are distinct from swyambhuvana manu, the naturally evolved man of wider Hindu religion (and is not to be confused with the righteous goddess Kali either).

In Mayan Mythology, the gods tried to destroy original man with a great flood but a few people managed to survive. For this act of defiance they were turned into the monkeys which populate the American jungles to this day.

Aztec Mythology, told that the original human race was devoured by ocelots. Not so cute anymore is it?

Creek Indians had taught that sky people predated the human race and that fire was stolen from them for us.

Classical Greek religion taught that when men were created by the Titans they had two heads, four arms, four legs and both sets of reproductive organs. They were later divided into males and females (the way most gods already were).

Izanagi and Izanami of Shinto are often interpreted as a god couple by modern readers but the classical texts suggest something more along the lines of original human beings, the vast differences between us and them simply popping up over time.

Tabletop games

Demon The Fallen actually depicts Adam and Eve as Ultimate Lifeforms. Their antediluvian descendants are also described as exceptionally powerful, if only because they had infinite faith (in God and the angels)—something that their modern descendants severely lack, much to the dismay of the returning Fallen.

Video games

In the Nasuverse, copies are always inferior to the original, and since children are considered copies of their originals, the first humans (i.e. human archetypes) have been immensely more powerful than their modern descendants.

In the Assassin's Creed franchise, humans are lifeforms created by members of an ancient and powerful race to be used as a Servant Race via Mind Manipulation. They look like us in pretty much every significant way, but with six senses instead of five. Adam and Eve were not the first humans, but the first Half Human Hybrids that were immune to their mind control. Millennia later, in the present, the ancient race is extinct and what was left of their genes has become severely diluted in the modern human race. As a result, we are all once again susceptible to Mind Manipulation.

In the Xenogears canon, the humans that live on the planet the game is set on are descendants of the creations of "Deus", the supercomputer that acts as the overarching central antagonist. As such, all humans are "pieces" of Deus itself that it one day plans to absorb as part of a millennia-long self-repair program. The "original" humans were part of the spaceship which Deus took over and destroyed.

Halo's original man used to be a lot more powerful but precursors conquered and reduced him to what eventually became his weaker modern form.

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Five hats means that five tropers think it is ready to publish.

You are saying that you think this draft is ready to be published. That means the description is not ambiguous,
it doesn't duplicate an existing trope, there are at least three examples, and the title makes sense.

Is that what you meant to do?

You are saying this draft has a ready-to-publish hat it does not deserve and you are taking it back.

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